From the ABC

Beirut bombing 'violates humanitarian law'
United Nations (UN) relief coordinator Jan Egeland says the extent of the destruction in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital amounts to a violation of humanitarian law.

Mr Egeland has been touring the bombed-out area of Beirut that has been targeted by Israel as a stronghold of militant group Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon and supported by Iran and Syria.

He says it is horrific, with block after block of houses destroyed.

"It's bigger, it's more extensive than I even could imagine," he said.

Mr Egeland says the violence is costing too many civilian lives and he has called on both sides to stop.

"It seems to be an excessive use of force in an area with so many civilians," he said.

"It makes it a violation of humanitarian law.

A variety of reaction from within Lebanon shows that some people are angry at Hizbollah but many are also very supportive... without being militants. Most know that Israel is going way beyond what is morally right, but also they know that whatever Hizbollah had done or not done, even if Hizbollah had sought a truce or peace of some sort, Israel would have attacked Lebanon, having prepared for this offensive for a long time... even before the Syrian solders had moved back to Syria...

The US plot is naive ( very much in tune with the dumb majority of people) and simple: while Israel is doing its massive illegal aggression (not to forget Israel having taken Hizbollah prisoners earlier from inside Lebanon in the same manner as Hizbollah did in retaliation later —Hizbollah incursion being "blamed" by the US for the escalation of the retaliation, discounting Israel's first role in the affair) the US is blaming Iran and Syria to shift the true responsibility away from their now fully fledged "decided" friends, the Israelis, in the very complex Middle East...

It's obvious the US want to control or at least destabilise the region in favour of Israel, using divisive tactics and Israel aggression, to bring everyone to heal... But they should realise by now, as Iraq bleeds of a thousand deaths that this attitude does not work well... and the US can read as many war manuals as they can (including the book by the French master on counter insurgency — a book on which they "feed" their new crops of officers) they cannot control the depth or resentment they are creating.

It's also obvious that the US want to attack Iran under any pretext and to save their troops the bother off being on the ground, would not be adverse to using nukes... This desire, even if they do not go ahead with their secret plans, is outrageous.

Thus If the desire of the US is to create and foster plenty more terrorism around the world in order to scare us — the plebs — into submission, then they might succeed. If the wish of the US is to create long-lasting peace, then they're up a rotten crumbling tree in a flooded creek with raging water rising, without a paddle.

And of course, Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, won't say a peep because they are making so much money from oil that their rulers are literally swimming in pools of cash and gold — a few crumbs of which they share with their slaving subjects, as not to have a revolution at hand. These rulers know that their cash cow has only a limited life and want to milk it as much as possible, thus also build many personal ostentatious palaces and pleasure cities for rich tourists. Denouncing Israel at this stage would upset the flow of milk and honey, as the US could and would make noises that they were siding with Hizbollah while they would only cry against the inhumanity of Israel...

In fact the massive bombing of East Beirut has not killed many people, if any, because Hizbollah had warned the people living there to evacuate into safe areas, which they did. But that bombing and the killing of innocent Lebanese has galvanised the spirit of resistance against the Israelis... The future will tell us the outcome of this second "grape of wrath" Israel invasion... ("grape of wrath" was the name give by the Israelis to their incursion into Lebanon in 1998... if my memory serves me right)... But of course the resistance to the Israelis will be deemed terrorism against Israel by the US ... One gets away with murder when your best friend is the school-yard bully...

From the Guardian

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Nasrallah has vowed that Hizbollah will fight on until Tel Aviv agrees to a prisoner exchange with four Lebanese held in Israel. His promise of war is in sharp contrast to the desires of most Beirutis, who want only peace. Even though most of the capital is unaffected by Israel's bombardments, a very deep pessimism is taking root. It is not just the agony of south Lebanon, and the garbage that is piling up. It is not the lack of fresh milk since the IDF bombed milk factories and the quadrupling, in many areas, of fruit and vegetable prices since the IDF smashed the roads between Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and south Lebanon.

It is fear for the future now that President Bush has placed Lebanon in the frame of his war against terror. And it is dismay at the blind self-righteousness of the two belligerents, both of whom assert that this catastrophe is in Lebanon's best interest. 'If I could get hold of Nasrallah, I would tear him to pieces,' a woman in the Christian mountains above Beirut said as F-16s bombed a roundabout in Baabda. 'Who the hell gave him the right to decide for us?'

For the moment, there is a new sense of Lebanese-ness as Israel strikes Muslim and Christian, soldier and militiaman, woman and child. 'I am really proud of this country,' said Ihab Ghandour, a Beirut businessman spending $6,000 a day on a relief operation staffed by dozens of young people of all religions and political persuasions, and who has transformed a network cafe into a media monitoring centre from where volunteers are bombarding the world's press with criticism. The idea grew from a television broadcast that reported '170 dead on both sides' at a time when Israel's dead were in single figures. 'That's revolting,' Ghandour said. 'The next day, I gathered people around.'

read more of this at the Guardian

From Al Jazeera

Saudi proposal

Meanwhile Saudi Arabia has asked President George Bush to intervene in Israel's military campaign in Lebanon to stop the mounting deaths.

"We are requesting a cease-fire to allow for a cessation of hostilities," Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said after an Oval Office meeting with Bush on Sunday.

Saud said he gave the US president a letter from Saudi King Abdullah asking that Bush help seek an immediate cease-fire in the Middle East conflict.

Saud, accompanied by Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, chief of the Saudi National Security Council, met Bush for more than an hour.
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Gus: I think they could have done so earlier, but the Saudis should be commended for at least demanding a cease-fire... What I said in the previous blog still stand. The Saudis do not want to rock the boat but the silence of the king might go against them in their own country... A very fine balance of managing the ebbs and flow of allegiances...

From the ABC

Israeli troops capture Hezbollah fighters
Israeli troops have seized two Hezbollah guerrillas during fighting in southern Lebanon.

The Army says the pair, who are believed to be the first prisoners taken in Lebanon during the 12-day-old conflict, have been seized in the village of Maroun al-Ras.

Maroun al-Ras, just across the Lebanese border, has been the scene of heavy clashes in recent days.

At least 12 civilians, including a Lebanese press photographer, were killed on Sunday in new Israeli air strikes across Lebanon.

Shiite guerrillas responded with a new hail of rocket fire on Israel's third city of Haifa, killing one person in his car and a second as he worked in a warehouse.

Streams of people, many waving white flags, are making a desperate trek from southern Lebanon after Israel ordered them to leave their homes, raising fears it is planning a largescale ground invasion.

The Israeli military early today fired five shells on the Rashidiyeh Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon, wounding six people, in the first such strike in its offensive.

At least 362 people have been killed in Israel's blitz against Lebanon which was launched after the capture of two soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas in a deadly border attack on July 12.

A total of 37 Israelis have died.

Cease-fire urged
Top Saudi Arabian officials have pressed President George W Bush to agree to seek a cease-fire in the conflict.

From the BBC

US pushes for wider Middle East change
By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website

No immediate breakthrough is expected during the visit of the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Middle East, beginning on Monday.
The effort to get a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is tied to a longer term ambition for American diplomacy in the Middle East.
But this does not mean simply giving Israel the green light to hammer Hezbollah.
The neo-conservative agenda for the Middle East is change.
The administration of US President George Bush sees in this crisis the chance of enforcing change by breaking Hezbollah and through that diminishing Syria and, above all, Iran.
According to the New York Times, Secretary Rice will aim to detach Syria from Iran and try to get Syria to put pressure on Hezbollah - the approach heralded by President Bush in his overheard conversation with Tony Blair at the G8 summit

read more at the BBC
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Gus: What the US is trying (very clear stated mission) to do with Syria and Iran is — in a not so strange way — the same as what the US Administration has been doing for a long time in Europe... and very overtly, I may say, done recently by president Bush... He wants to weaken the bond between France and Germany, and in the process weaken Europe. He knows that Europe cannot be fully Europe until the Poms join in earnest with their Pound... But in the meantime, pouring a bit of discreet "zizany" as the French would say... is on. "Zizany" is the art of of a third party creating chaos between friends, by using lies, innuendoes and flattery... all this for the benefit of that third party or his master...

On international level, this is done by giving favours to one country and not to the other... this bribery entails very overt silly remarks and jokes (the "pig" with the German Prime Minister, for example, distracting from the intent) but the subterranean intent is very focused and powerful... at all levels, including "diplomats".

From the Guardian

Blasted by a missile on the road to safety

Family ordered to flee were targeted because they were driving minivan

Suzanne Goldenberg in Kafra, Lebanon
Monday July 24, 2006
The Guardian

The ambulanceman gave Ali the job of keeping his mother alive. The 12-year-old did what he could. "Mama, mama, don't go to sleep," he sobbed, gently patting her face beneath her chin. Behind her black veil, her eyelids were slowly sinking. "I'm going to die," she sighed. "Don't say that, mama," Ali begged, and then slid to the ground in tears.
On the pavement around mother and son were the other members of the Sha'ita family, their faces spattered with each other's blood. All were in varying shades of shock and injury. A tourniquet was tied on Ali's mother's arm. A few metres away, his aunt lay motionless, the white T-shirt beneath her abaya stained red. Two sisters hugged each other and wept, oblivious to the medics tending their wounds. "Let them take me, let them take me," one screamed.

read the horrible rest at the guardian

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Gus: In the meantime whether the blame rests with this or that, It is undeniable Israel has taken upon itself to multiply a small border skirmish (in which they had some part in) into a full blown out war...

It is unfortunate that Hizbollah is responding in small kind with rockets hitting Israeli cities... But then when murder happens, retaliation and revenge can but continue amongst thugs, especially when the world-"cop" takes side with one of the murderers...

Blatant injustice

From the independent

Sectarian break-up of Iraq is now inevitable, admit officials
By Patrick Cockburn in Amman
Published: 24 July 2006
The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, meets Tony Blair in London today as violence in Iraq reaches a new crescendo and senior Iraqi officials say the break up of the country is inevitable.

A car bomb in a market in the Shia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad yesterday killed 34 people and wounded a further 60 and was followed by a second bomb in the same area two hours later that left a further eight dead. Another car bomb outside a court house in Kirkuk killed a further 20 and injured 70 people.

"Iraq as a political project is finished," a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: "The parties have moved to plan B." He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west," he said.

Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, told The Independent in an interview, before joining Mr Maliki to fly to London and then Washington, that in theory the government should be able to solve the crisis because Shia, Kurd and Sunni were elected members of it.

But he painted a picture of a deeply divided administration in which senior Sunni members praised anti-government insurgents as "the heroic resistance".

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Gus: Obviously, the US is grindingly succeeding... Iraq breaking up would complete the US dream... On one side a giant slab of Shia Muslim left with a bit of oil, in the middle the Sunnis with a bit of oil and on the other side the Kurd with a bit of oil... and the US with a lot of oil.. Victory at last on the horizon... A divided Iraq ends up as a weaker three bits, with little bargaining power... Hurray!

This is why when a US "administrator", who wanted to have proper elections in Iraq as soon as Saddam had been eliminated, was removed forthwith and the US delayed elections as much as possible so that chaos would fester and that the outcome would weaken the place... The plan to have no plan is fiendish but very very good... for the US.

But we have to see that yet, because the present PM of Iraq is in the pocket of the US and is doing the US bidding.. The breaking up of Iraq...